The Making of Arab Americans by Hani Bawardi

Author:Hani Bawardi [Bawardi, Hani J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2014-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 5.1. Letter from Fuad Shatara to Ameen Farah, March 26, 1925. Farah Papers, Bawardi Collection.

The communiqué published in the August 6, 1936, Al-Saʾeh announcing the formation of the Arab National League was actually an endorsement by authors William Catzeflis, Amin Zeidan, and Philip Khouri of plans by Shatara to reinvigorate his organization, the Palestine Renaissance Society. The authors were not among the founders of the league, nor did they play a major role in its operations. Urging readers to “unite in the new organization to defend the old homeland, especially Palestine,”131 this communiqué confirmed the shift from defending Syria against the French occupation to the plight of Palestine to the south. Shatara referred to the nascent Arab National League under two distinct names: Jamʿīyat al-Nahḍah al-Filasṭīnīyah (Palestine Nationalist Renaissance Society) and, in English, the Palestine National League. Fuad Shatara sent this letter to Farah on March 26, 1925:132

Greetings. I received your letter on the 19th this month. In response I can tell you that in New York there exists Jamʿīyat al-Nahḍah al-Filasṭīnīyah, which was founded several years ago to combat the Zionist movement and which achieved worthwhile deeds in the cause of the homeland. The society collected some $25,000 [more than $300,000 now] to support the national movement for the delegation in London and for propaganda here. The address of the Society is: Palestine National League. 16 W. 27 St. New York City. The annual membership is $5.00. There are other ways of helping the homeland, among them subscription to Filasṭīn [newspaper], which struggled for the homeland and is in need of the support of patriots. Its annual subscription is $6.00 annually. The editor will send me several issues for new subscribers. This is what came to mind that I wanted to share with you [plural] with my thanks for your national zeal.

Yours,

Fuad Shatara

Despite these variations in the name of the society that became the nucleus of the Arab National League, Ḥabīb Kātibah confirmed that they were one and the same. In the Arabic translation of Kātibah’s Arab Speakers in Americans, a 1946 publication by the Institute of Arab American Affairs of Al-Nāṭiqūn bi al-Ḍād fi Amrīkā, a more detailed account than the original English version, Kātibah mentions that Abdelhamid Shouman, who later founded the Arab Bank in Palestine, was among the co-founders of the Palestine National League. Thus, the PNL by any name apparently waited until the New Syria Party and the Druze revolt had run their courses before reemerging as the Arab National League. Perhaps the most accurate account of the founding of the ANL as well as other organizations under study here can be found in Kātibah’s Al-Nāṭiqūn bi al-Ḍād fi Amrīkā. Kātibah provides a brief historical genesis of the ANL and the institute after listing the NSP in 1926 in this manner:

In 1923, Dr. Fuad Isa Shatara founded the Palestine National League, considered the first society whose aim was defending the cause of Arab Palestinians. In fact, these intermittent nationalist movements were a prelude to

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